Picturesque English Cottages and Their Doorway Gardens 
AN OLD HOUSE AT BRATTON 
Some of the old streets of our towns re¬ 
main, such as Canterbury, where the upper 
storeys of the houses project far into the 
street, and the inhabitants of opposite houses 
can almost shake hands out of the highest 
windows. Such houses also abound 
in Brittany and other parts of 
France. These projecting 
houses are not earlier than 
the time of Oueen Eliza- 
(V 
beth or James 1 . Those 
built before that pe¬ 
riod do not project so 
much. 
The house in its 
first stage was a mere 
timber skeleton, and 
until the framing was 
well advanced, had to 
be propped and stayed 
from the outside. The 
slots cut to receive these 
stays can still be seen in the 
large timbers on the ground 
floor of many of the houses. 
The spaces between the main 
uprights were filled in with win¬ 
dows or framing, the timbers of which were 
generally about 8 or 9 inches apart, and nearly 
as much in width, the closeness of the tim¬ 
bering being one of the characteristics of early 
work; and it was not until later, when timber 
became more scarce, that they were 
set further apart, and curved and 
shaped braces introduced. 
The divisions between the 
timbers were then filled 
in by fixing upright 
hazel rods in grooves 
cut in the top and bot¬ 
tom, and by then 
twisting thinner hazel 
wands h u r d 1 e w i s e 
round them. T he 
panel was then filled 
up with a plaster of 
clay and chopped straw, 
and finished with a coat 
of lime plaster. The tim¬ 
bers were usually left un¬ 
painted in the southern coun¬ 
ties, but in modern times are 
often painted black. In Lan¬ 
cashire and Cheshire they are 
OLD COTTAGES 
AT BOUGHTON-UNDER- 
BLEAN, KENT 
